| Jazz |
Summary: A rich, genre-blending album, No Wind & No Rain by the Chicago Soul Jazz Collective captures the spirit of Chicago through soulful compositions, tight arrangements, and a powerful sense of musical heritage and resilience.
A City in the Wind, a Sound in Motion
On certain Chicago nights, the wind seems to carry more than weather, it carries echoes. Brass lines drifting out of half-lit clubs, basslines rolling low beneath the “L,” voices that sound like both testimony and release. It is this atmosphere, restless, layered, alive, that No Wind & No Rain, the fourth album by the Chicago Soul Jazz Collective, captures with striking fidelity.
This is not merely a fusion of jazz, funk, blues and soul. It is something more elusive, something that resists classification altogether. In doing so, it comes remarkably close to defining the cultural soul of Chicago itself, at least as it can be understood through music.
Led by saxophonist John Fournier and anchored by the commanding presence of vocalist Dee Alexander, the seven-piece ensemble has, over time, refined a sound that bridges eras without collapsing into nostalgia. Under the careful and textured production of guitarist Larry Brown Jr., the record balances polish and grit, sophistication and immediacy. It feels lived-in, yet deliberate, much like the city that shaped it.
The album opens with The Laughing Heart, a piece that immediately establishes both tone and intent: lyrical, searching, and quietly expansive. From there, A Town Called Mercy deepens the emotional palette, its blend of melody and message suggesting both longing and resilience. Tracks like So Alive pt. 2 inject kinetic energy, driven by groove and vocal urgency, while the title track, No Wind & No Rain, stands as a thematic centerpiece, its layered composition reflecting both stillness and underlying tension.
There are moments of pause and reflection as well. There is Light interlude #1 offers a brief but effective breath, while Message to a Child feels almost didactic in its tenderness, echoing the tradition of soul music as a vehicle for guidance and transmission. By the time On the Way to Be Free and There is Light Somewhere close the record, the arc is clear: this is an album concerned not only with memory, but with movement, toward something freer, if not yet fully resolved.
From the outset, the record invites physical response. It is difficult not to nod along, not to feel the pull of its rhythms. Yet beneath that immediate appeal lies something more ambitious. Like the gleaming bodywork of a 1970s Cadillac, its surface allure conceals intricate engineering: compositions that trace a lineage, arrangements that demonstrate a high level of craft, and a conceptual coherence that elevates the project beyond mere homage.
Still, the album is not without its minor limitations. At times, its deep reverence for tradition edges close to constraint, as if reluctant to fully break from the forms it so carefully preserves. And yet, even in those moments, the sincerity of execution carries it forward.
The origins of the Collective add another layer of resonance. In 2017, Fournier, adrift and searching for grounding, returned to the records that had first shaped him: Ramsey Lewis, The Crusaders, Horace Silver, Cannonball Adderley, Eddie Harris, Les McCann. What he found was not just inspiration, but restoration. That sense of rediscovery remains embedded in the album’s DNA.
What began as a modest Wednesday-night residency at the WIRE club in Berwyn, Illinois, quickly evolved into something larger. By the second performance, the room was full. Since then, the group has built a reputation for drawing packed audiences, listeners drawn to a sound that feels both familiar and urgently present.
For some, this music will trigger something deeply personal. It certainly did for me. Listening to No Wind & No Rain brought me back to my early years in France, learning the saxophone, working through the grooves of MFSB records. That same vitality is here, the same sense of pulse, of insistence, of music as both expression and quiet resistance.
Fournier himself frames the project in broader terms: a response to difficult times, and a reminder of endurance. Chicago’s musical traditions, like the city, are built on resilience. That idea runs through the album, not as a slogan, but as a current.
And it is here that the Chicago Soul Jazz Collective succeeds most convincingly. This is not simply an exercise in preservation, nor a nostalgic reconstruction. It is a continuation, an effort to carry forward a lineage shaped by figures such as Herbie Hancock, Muddy Waters, Oscar Brown Jr., Terry Callier, Von Freeman, Etta James, King Oliver and Mavis Staples, while adding something of their own.
The result feels, at moments, almost documentary in nature, an artistic chronicle of a tradition still in motion. But more importantly, it demonstrates that this tradition remains alive, adaptable, and deeply human in its capacity to comfort and connect.
In the end, No Wind & No Rain does not try to outshout the city it represents. It listens, absorbs, and answers back in kind. And like Chicago itself, it leaves you with the sense that beneath the surface, steady, unyielding, something vital is still moving forward.
Thierry De Clemensat
Member at Jazz Journalists Association
USA correspondent for Paris-Move and ABS magazine
Editor in chief – Bayou Blue Radio, Bayou Blue News
PARIS-MOVE, March 19th 2026
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Release Celebration Concerts:
April 18-19, 2026 – Winter’s Jazz Club
May 14-17, 2026 – The Jazz Showcase
Musicians :
DEE ALEXANDER: vocals
LARRY BROWN JR.: guitar, vocals
KEITH BROOKS II: drums, B-3 organ
MICAH COLLIER: electric and acoustic bass
AMR FAHMY: piano, Rhodes
JOHN FOURNIER: tenor saxophone
RYAN NYTHER: trumpet, flugelhorn
Track Listing :
1. The Laughing Heart / music by John Fournier (ASCAP)
2. A Town Called Mercy / music and lyrics by John Fournier
3. So Alive pt. 2 / music and lyrics by Larry Brown Jr. (BMI)
4. No Wind & No Rain / lyrics by John Fournier, music by John Fournier and Larry Brown Jr.
5. There is Light interlude #1 / music by Larry Brown Jr.
6. Message to a Child / lyrics by John Fournier, music by John Fournier and Larry Brown Jr.
7. On the way to be free / music and lyrics by John Fournier
8. There is Light Somewhere / music by John Fournier
9. A Groove for Ramsey / music by John Fournier
10. There is Light interlude #2 / music by John Fournier
Produced by Larry Brown Jr.
All compositions published by Fournier Music (ASCAP) and Larry Brown Jr. (BMI)
Arranged by Larry Brown Jr. and CSJC
Post production, Recording and Auxiliary Instrumentation by Aaron Day
Recorded by Brennan Mitrolka at Transient Sound Recorded by Jon Smith at Retro Room Recording
Mixed and Mastered by Mason Bonner
Cover art by Arthur Wright